Merry Merry Manglement

It's A Bit Of A Truism

That South Canadians like to bang on about how free they are, when at the same time employers, especially in the catering business, try to treat their employees as indentured serfs bordering on slaves.  For example, most states over there have 'At will' employment status, meaning that the boss can fire anyone for anything they feel like at any time, with no recourse available to the employee.  This cuts both ways as the employees can walk out at any moment they feel like it.  Art!

Because employment law is terminally dull stuff for images

     I shall now regale you with yet another tale of an inept manager who thought his workforce were obligated peasant serfs, and how this came to bite him on the bottom most severely.

     Original Poster worked as a delivery driver for a pizza franchise that he wisely refrains from naming, which was hit hard by the Corona.  They covered a huge catchment area, and refused to shrink it at all. Opening hours were from 11:00 to midnight, with at least another hour spent cleaning up and prepping for the next day.  To begin with they had 16 drivers and barely coped, and Shrieking Manager managed to drive away 2 drivers per month until they were left with - well, we'll get to that.  They needed 6 drivers for normal trade and 12 if things got busy, which they regularly did.  Art!

     By the time of posting, OP is doing 90 hours per week but thanks to late deliveries isn't getting tipped, so his wages are effectively halved.

     SM is in the parlour on his once-per-month duty, screaming at staff, lying to customers ("It'll be there in fifteen minutes" when it would take at least an hour)  and generally getting in the way.  He insists his staff are all lazy whiners incapable of working and are doing all they can to sabotage his business.  He very stupidly insults OP under his breath which proves to be the last straw: OP drops the boxed pizzas he was carrying, cashes himself out, empties his locker and comes back in only to throw the pizza signage from his car onto the pile of now-cooling pizzas.  Art!

     OP then slept the sleep of the justified and ignored 5 texts and a panicked voicemail from SM.

     Cue updates.  SM leaves messages about when OP is coming in?  By message 8 the tone has changed and there are now threats about legal resort for 'Job Abandonment' and ruining his business.  OP is now also able to collect unemployment benefit from the business because SM fired him by text.

     On Sunday OP drove by to drop off his uniform - and the parlour was closed.  A hand-written sign declared 'Closed due to lack of staff', because two more left on Friday thanks to his apoplectic rage, and his last driver quit on Saturday, leaving only SM, the general manager and a part-timer who did 10 hours per week.  Art!

     On Thursday SM shows up on OP's doorstep, demanding that OP come in the next day because Friday is extremely busy.  I mean, does this man have solid bone between the ears?  He then launches into a tirade that it's all OP's fault because now there's only the General Manager left and he's spending so much money sending pizzas out via DoorDash that the business is tanking moneywise.

     OP expresses his utter disconnection with any of this and goes back inside.  SM then proves true to form and hammers on the door whilst shrieking with rage.  Eventually he goes to leave and OP, being petty as a small child, opens the door just enough to state how much the business and SM suck and ends with " - and I hope you go bankrupt so I can laugh at you panhandling on a street corner!"

     Which might not have been the most diplomatic thing to say ...

     OP certainly knew how to push SM's rage buttons, because he came back to pound on the door and shriek for twenty minutes, until the neighbours called the cops.  Art!

     It must have been a slow night, three patrol cars turned up.  OP got to enjoy sitting on his porch watching SM trying to worm his way out of trouble.  He found out SM had gone to other houses to harass ex-staff and they are considering hiring an attorney, as OP's Ring doorbell caught everything.

     That was 6 months ago, with no more updates.  Really, you could title this tale "101 How Not To Run A Business" or "101 How To Ruin A Business".

The Chemical From Hell

Yes, it's our old fiend, Chlorine Trifluoride, the stuff that makes everything burn, including asbestos and ashes from things already burnt.  Glass, steel, sand; you name it, ClF3 will set it alight.

     I may have regaled you with the tale of a ClF3 spillage, where a container holding a ton of the stuff ruptured.  Art!

     There is no way to extinguish a Chlorine Trifluoride fire, so the staff had to let it burn out.  Before it did so it had gone through a foot of concrete - "The concrete was on fire" is not a phrase commonly encountered - and a yard of ground beneath that.

     Thanks to Quora I found out that the steel container had been cooled with dry ice, in order to make handling the CTF loading easier.  Nobody doing the cooling or loading realised that, at very low temperatures, steel becomes brittle.  Thus it split apart thanks to being as robust as an Easter egg in an oven.  One Quoran pondered why nobody was injured or killed: Conrad supposes that hearing the phrase "Loading Chlorine Trifluoride" would empty the storage area quick smart.

"Charlie Peace"

The name of a Victorian villain, before you ask, mentioned in passing by Sherlock Holmes in one of the short stories I've been reading.  Ol' Sher claims that CP was a passable violinist, which doesn't seem borne out in any way by his biography.  Art!

     Not a looker, frankly.  Somewhat bizzarely, he featured in "Buster" in "The Astounding Adventures Of Charlie Peace", for no good reason.  Art!

     In case you were wondering at the sight of cars in Victorian England, he got sent to the present-day in a time-machine.  Of course he did.

"The Sea Of Sand"

When last we visited, the bio-vores were making a spirited assault on the Forward Supply Depot, having learned a few hard lessons.

The A13 fired again, then again, and again.  The shells all hit the rear of the black tank, knocking off great chunks and physically shifting the vehicle.  The movement was sufficient to expose part of the weapon concealed behind the tank.

          Before the bio-vores could launch any more glass shrapnel bombs, the Sahariana driven by Torrevechio came bounding over the gravel from the south, shrugging off glass darts and stun rays from the dispersed bio-vore skirmishers, the A13’s dismounted engine covers making excellent protection. 

          At a hundred yards distant from the aliens, Torrevechio fired up the flamethrower and drove straight at them, drenching the unfortunate victims in blazing fuel and killing them almost instantly.  Next he swerved to the left and poured liquid flame over a few of the pinned-down bio-vores.

          Faced with a weapon so terrifying, the surviving bio-vores broke and ran, only half a dozen of them getting away: Doretti saw to that, picking off runners with a Bren gun.  He felt a savage delight in bowling the stampeding monsters over with a brace of bullets, until Sarah stopped him with a restraining hand.

          ‘Enough,’ she said.  ‘No killing for the sake of it.  We need to defend ourselves, not to slaughter.’

          Doretti’s face, when they found the injured Davey, looked coolly and appraisingly at Sarah.

     Hmmmmm he's not a happy chappy, is he?

Finally -

Okay, time to let my quaking bowels calm down and then it'll be scrape-face time and an afternoon constitutional into Lesser Sodom to see what's going cheap.  Toodle-oo!